It has never been brought home to me quite so clearly how Congress is composed of knaves and fools.

Congress has finally awakened in outrage at the Bush administration's overweening sense of self-importance, disregard for legal and political nicities, and utter disbelief in the right to privacy. The FBI served a warrant on a Congressional office over the weekend, and searched the files of a Congressman; and the Congress has yielded itself to a bipartisan tizzy.

They have a point: it's not at all clear that the offices of the legislature should be searchable by officers of the executive branch, even with a warrant, and the administration has clearly overstepped its bounds. Yes, the Congressman in question is almost certainly a corrupt SOB and is likely to be guilty of everything the FBI says he is; but as a matter of principle, the legislature must in its own domain be free from intrusion and examination by the executive. They're right to be upset.

The outrageous part, however, is this: the administration has for some time been showing a reckless disregard for limits on its investigative powers. It has claimed the right to listen to all international phone calls without warrants or individual suspicion; Congress has not cared. It has claimed the right to collect the phone records of every phone in America, compiling statistical studies of who is calling whom, and when, and for how long; Congress has not cared.

Congress cares enough to protect its prerogatives, its independance and freedom from arbitrary treatment and suspicion, but it doesn't care enough to protect the citizenry.

Freedom for me, but not for thee: that is the message the legislature wishes us to hear.